It's been quite some time since I've posted on my blog. I'm finally ready to start back blogging. While I did enjoy my time away, I have missed blogging and all my friends here. I did need the rest and the time to concentrate on certain goals I wanted to accomplish. I have been able to achieve some of the things I wanted to do during my hiatus. Some of the other items I am still currently working on.
When I took my break, I wasn't really sure how long I would be away. I had figured at most that I might be gone for six weeks to two months. I never would have imagined I would have been away this long. I heard from quite a lot of people who did miss this blog, as well as my Sugar & Spice blog, and wondered when I was coming back. I was never quite sure. I think I got burned out and overwhelmed with my blogs. It got to be where it felt like a job. It just got to a point where I felt stressed out.
There are going to be some changes. One of the biggest changes will be in the amount of postings I do. Before I was doing a post every weekday, but I won't be doing that this time around. One thing is that I don't want to feel the stress and tension I felt before. Plus I no longer have internet access at my house. I don't have the time and so forth these days to do that many posts. I plan to do around two posts per week. They will generally be posted on Mondays and Wednesdays. They will probably be posted around 9AM Eastern Standard Time. Some weeks I might only do one post on this blog, while other weeks I might do three. Two will be the normal amount for this blog though. The same goes for my other blog as well.
While my blog originally focused on Dean Martin and the Rat Pack, I plan to mix it up this time around. You've noticed that I'm now calling this blog Coolness Is Timeless. That was always part of the previous title, The Dino Lounge: Coolness Is Timeless. I did do posts back then that focused on other men I admire from both the past and present. I covered everybody from Cary Grant to Fonzworth Bentley. I want to do more of that. I plan to still cover Dino and those cool cats this time around, but I want to expand the blog out to share some of my other interests. That's the main reason why I didn't feel it was right to continue to keep the previous title since the main focus would no longer be on Dean Martin. I'll continue to do posts on him and the Rat Pack, but there is so much more I want to post about now. Coolness is truly timeless. It never goes out of style. I have a lot of retro interests, but I also embrace the best of our modern times as well. I want to try to find the right balance between the past and the present.
This blog is a work in progress. This is a time of evolution for this blog. I'm really excited about the future here. I've got some great ideas about what I want to do here. I can't wait to start having fun again. I do hope that all my readers from before will return to read my blog. I've missed all of you. I am sorry for going away so long. I also hope that you will enjoy what I do with this blog. I know things are going to be different now, but I do hope you will stick around. Thanks for all your support, encouragement, friendship, etc. I have appreciated all of it so much. Cheers!
P.S. I hope that you will link to my blog. If you add a new link, please let me know so I can add a link to your blog as well. If you already linked to my blog, please change the title of the link to Coolness Is Timeless instead of The Dino Lounge. Thanks.
I'm not sure how many of you guys get your trashed picked up. Mine gets picked up on Wednesdays. While I'm thankful for the trash men who do collect my garbage, I would be delighted to see these cool cats pull up curbside to empty my trash cans.
Here are some more great screencaps from my pallie Steph. These are again from Ocean's 11. Dino is enjoying his drink and checking out some art. I hope you like these. Cheers!
P.S. If you didn't see my previous post of screencaps, click on this Ocean's 11 link to visit that post. Feel free to leave comments there if you like. Thanks.
The iReel Movie Blog has a post about Ocean's 11. It even includes a link to my Dino Lounge blog in it. I hope you'll check it out.
A really good pallie of mine online, Steph, has sent me quite a lot of screenshots from some different Dean Martin movies. I decided it was time to start posting some of them. Here are some from Ocean's 11. I really dig that pad. I hope you enjoy them. There are many more to come in the future. Cheers!
This picture comes from my pallie Steve.I'd love to hang out and play some pool with Dino and Frankie. Check out the cool pad. That would be my kind of place.
This picture comes courtesy of my pallie Steve. This photo is from the Rat Pack flick Ocean's 11. I've posted the following clip before, but I love seeing Dean Martin perform Ain't That A Kick In The Head. I hope you enjoy it.
Happy New Year's Day! Dean Martin's here to entertain us all as 2009 rings in. I hope you enjoy this clip of Dino singing Ain't That A Kick In The Head (my favorite tune of his) from Ocean's 11. Let's raise a toast to celebrate the dawn of the new year. Dino wants all his pallies to have a cool and swingin' 2009. Cheers!
These two pictures of Dean Martin come courtesy of my pallie Steve.
Aren't these both from Ocean's Eleven? I think so unless I'm mistaken. Cheers!
P.S. Check out my latest post at Celluloid Slammer. It actually features one of Dino's beautiful co-stars. I posted the trailer for One Million Years B.C. It doesn't get much sexier than Raquel Welch as a cave girl. Wow!
Here's a clip from the Rat Pack heist flick Ocean's Eleven. This scene is when the pallies are discussing their plan to steal from five Vegas casinos at the stroke of midnight on New Year's. I hope you enjoy it. I really love this movie. It was so cool seeing all the Rat Packers together. Cheers!
P.S. This is not Rat Pack related at all, but I wanted to make a mention of my latest contribution to Celluloid Slammer. I posted the movie trailer for Foxy Brown. The film is a blaxploitation classic, plus it stars the sexy and tough Pam Grier. I hope you'll check out my latest post there. Please feel free to leave comments as well. Thanks.
Here is a great clip I found of Sammy Davis Jr.'s guest spot in 1969 on Hugh Hefner's Playboy After Dark television show. Sammy gets surprised by Jerry Lewis and Peter Lawford. Another star or two might appear in this clip, but I'll leave that to you to see who it is. I love this clip. It's about 10 minutes long, but it is well worth watching. I hope you will give it a shot.
I can't even imagine a show like this on television today. We don't have stars like this anymore for one thing. It has such a cool and hip style to it all. Plus I really dig all the music and banter that goes on. It would have been such a dream to have been on the set of this episode or any of the other awesome episodes. I really want to get this on DVD.
I really do hope you will take the time to watch this clip. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Let me know what you think. Cheers!
P.S. I've never been a huge Jerry Lewis fan, but I have gotten to like him a lot more over the years. I've also gotten more into Peter Lawford. While I enjoyed his role in Ocean's 11, it was really his turn with Sammy in both Salt and Pepper and One More Time that really charmed me on Peter. For those that don't know, Jerry directed these two cool cats in the latter of those flicks.
I wonder what Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine are looking at. I also wonder if Dino told Shirley a joke to crack her up. She definitely has a case of the giggles.
I really love this picture. We know that these two were great friends. They played in quite a few films together, including Artist and Models, Some Came Running, Ocean's 11, and Cannonball Run II.
Shirley had a huge crush on Dino. Here are a few excerpts about her feelings for him.
Veteran actress SHIRLEY MACLAINE had a secret crush on DEAN MARTIN back in the 1940s, while the Hollywood legend was still married. The 73-year-old actress, who went on to wed businessman Steve Parker, was coy about defining her relationship with the Rat Pack star at the time, because he was married to Elizabeth MCDonald, the mother of his four children. But MacLaine - who divorced Parker in 1982 - now admits she was beguiled by him. She says, "It was a crush for about six weeks. He was so funny. We had the same agent and we would all have dinner together. He would try out his material on me because I'm a great laugher. And I would try out material on him, and Mort, the agent, would be the referee. "He was an interesting man, Dean. Totally uneducated. And then he self educated..."
Ocean's 11, starring the Rat Pack, was released in 1960. It was directed by Lewis Milestone (his credits include All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930 and The Halls of Montezuma in 1950). While not the first film to star any members of the Rat Pack together (Sinatra and Martin had done Some Came Running in 1958), this is the film that defined the Rat Pack. It is most certainly one of the coolest flicks of the swingin' 60's. The film highlighted what made the Rat Pack so cool and hip. It would help set the mood for an entire era.
Frank Sinatra played Danny Ocean. He's a bit of a cad, who enjoys living life dangerously. His marriage to Beatrice (Angie Dickinson) has been wrecked due to his attitude and lifestyle. With the backing of Spyros Acebos (Akim Tamiroff), Danny masterminds a heist to rob five Las Vegas casinos on New Year's Eve. The casinos are the Sahara, the Flamingo, the Sands, the Desert Inn, and the Riviera. He recruits his buddies from the 82nd Airborne Division to help him in this plot. These guys had all served together during World War II. The first part of the movie is spent rounding up all the old buddies. Dean Martin plays Sam Harmon, a nightclub entertainer who seems reluctant to join in on the caper. Peter Lawford is Jimmy Foster, a guy who is tired of living off the wealth of his multi-time married mother. Sammy Davis Jr. is Josh Howard, a demolitions expert turned garbage collector. Joey Bishop is Mushy O'Conners. I'll be honest that I could never quite figure out what he was up to. He seemed like the assistant to Spyros Acebos. The other friends all had specialities from their military service that can be put to good use in the heist. They agree to join in because they really could use the money. The heist is planned out like a military operation.
The men are split up between the casinos. Explosive charges are planted on an electrical transmission tower that controls the power for Las Vegas. The backup electrical systems are rewired so they will open the cashier cages instead of powering the emergency lighting systems. The lights go out in Vegas at the stroke of midnight as people are celebrating the ringing in of New Year's. The men deployed in the different casinos rush into the cashier cages and collect all the money. There are millions and millions of dollars there. The loot is put into garbage bins. Josh, driving a garbage truck, goes around the city and picks up the bags.
The plan seems to go off with a hitch. Of course, we know that can't be the case. Crime usually never pays in the movies. One of the men has a heart attack and dies out on the Vegas Strip. The casinos also make a deal with Duke Santos (played by Cesar Romero, who deliciously chews up the scenery). Santos is a reformed ganster, who is engaged to Jimmy's mother. He has his suspicions of who might be behind the crime. He knows that Jimmy and his pallies are really in Vegas, when they supposedly were going to be away somewhere else. I won't spoil the rest of the movie for those who haven't seen it.
Shirley MacLaine, as well as several other stars, had a cameo in the movie. She had a pretty hilarious scene with Dean Martin. While Shirley received a car as a gift for her cameo, she said that she did the part so she could spend time with the Rat Pack. Much of the film was done in the late hours of the night and the early morning because the the Rat Packers were performing at the Sands at night. When the guys are walking down the street at the end of the film, you can see that the Rat Pack is billed on the sign at the Sands. Sammy was forced to stay at a "colored only" hotel during their time in Vegas. That was only changed after Sinatra demanded that the casino bosses allow Sammy to stay with his pallies.
Ocean's 11 is one of the iconic films of the 1960's. It's the definitive representative of what made Las Vegas, Sin City itself, the playground of the Rat Pack and others with class and style. Some complain that there's not much of a plot or action in this movie. I don't think this movie was trying to be rocket science. It was a fun ride for a bunch of pallies to take. The Rat Packers were all essentially playing themselves. The movie was a great excuse for them to hang out and have a good time. All the witty banter that goes back and forth between these cool cats is worth seeing. This film perfectly sums up what it is we all love about this swingin' era. If you haven't seen it, I hope you will check it out. Any fans of this flick here? Let me know what you think.
Tomorrow I'll be taking a look at the Rat Pack classic Ocean's 11. I hope you will definitely check out that post and leave me some comments on it. It's one of my favorite films of the 1960's. It truly defines what made the Rat Pack so cool and hip. Here's an awesome pic of Dino goofing around with Sammy, while Peter and Joey are looking on. I'm sure that many of you know that Dino was once a boxer. He was dubbed "Kid Crocetti."
I mean no copyright infringement by the posting of pictures, videos, etc. on this blog. I do not in any way claim the rights of ownership to any of them. They totally remain the property of their respective owners. I have posted them purely for entertainment purposes only. All written content, unless otherwise noted as being quotes, has been written and copyrighted by me.
